In which I realised that we almost forgot to mention we are a finalist in the Dutch Design Awards (again). Perloo is nominated in the communication category, along with some great other projects. Good stuff.

During the pilot, the rapidly growing problem of “digital addiction” was addressed. After three days of heavy brainstorming, rapid prototyping, testing assumptions and little sleep, the “Senang” concept was presented. Senang is Indonesian for “happy” – and that’s exactly what the app, object and campaign are designed to make you feel. So quit watching Pharrell and become Senang!

Also, we finished the secret vault for Navid Nuur, hidden somewhere in an unidentified marble cave. Let’s go there sometime!

may 15, 2014 – bastiaan

This is week 197.

With the flurry of World Press Photo projects behind us we've been stretching our legs, contemplating the future and staring at this bird video posted by Navid Nuur.

april 18, 2014 – casper

This is week 192, in which we frequently visited De Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam to make some final tweaks to the World Press Photo Multimedia Contest kiosk apps. In the end, it was well worth the effort. The stunning exhibition runs until June 22, don’t miss it!

april 11, 2014 – casper

This is week 192.

It’s been quiet at the studio. Xav moved on to start a new adventure at Supersteil – and he took his enthousiasm, positive attitude and incredible barista skills with him. Our donuts have never missed their quintessential counterpart more. Good luck Xavi!

By tradition, April is high World Press Photo season. This week, we finished exhibition apps for iOS and Android and the Multimedia Contest kiosk app. Bastiaan is installing the latter onto 12 iMacs as we speak, so I’m afraid his weekend won’t come early.

Last Monday, we told about the come-into-being of Crowdpilot at This Happened Utrecht, which was fun as we actually Crowdpiloted our presentation. In case you’re interested: check out the 10 minute talk here.

This morning, Finn came by bringing a gigantic box of donuts. Later, an even bigger box full of specialty beers was delivered. I guess life is like a box of chocolates: sooner than later, you’re gonna get pretty darn fat – at least at Perceptor. Bye!

march 14, 2014 – bastiaan

This is week 188.

We've been off the radar for a bit. For the most part, this was due to the Perloo launch which completely and totally blew us away. The first week saw more than 200.000 downloads. The realization that people were playing our game after more than a year of hard work was unreal. To top it off, they were enjoying Perloo – just like the friendly bunch to your left.

Also, quotes like this: “If Hegel had developed an iPhone app, we think it would have been a lot like this.”

Crowdpilot – the app that will let you crowdsource your conversations – is about to launch after a period of relentless tweaking. Getting the Turks to play along with our little scheme was quite a challenge, but we finally nailed it by going back to basics.

Perloo, our crazy-hard iPhone puzzle game will launch February 20 and we're in the midst of final preparations for that launch. Last week we had a great time showing Perloo at the Dutch Game Garden in Utrecht. We met lots of nice people and got some solid advice on marketing the game (thanks Adriaan!). We also has the opportunity to play Metrico and meet the team behind it, which was great and worth the trip on its own.

On thursday, we attended the special IXD14 This Happened in Amsterdam which was inspiring as always. Also on the side: work on Punchtime with the Amsterdam Filmacademy and preparations for other upcoming projects. Phew!

The week kicked off with exciting news: the person we approached for voice overs in Perloo agreed to work with us. This meant that we could finish up a lot of loose ends. We spent time polishing and tweaking the game, and started writing about it. Even though we have a very clear idea of what the game is about, capturing that idea in words is always a challenge. Its the last open end that we're now carefully closing up: a thought that is both extremely satisfying and paralyzingly terrifying.

Also, time was spent on Crowdpilot where we are trying to cooerce the Mechanical Turk crowd to play along with us. Generally, MT tasks don't leave much room for creativity, and trying to get the workers to think outside of habits turns out to be quite challenging. After countless revisions to the style, tone and format of our questionnaire, we seem be making progress.